Enhancing and sustaining maize production through ridge tillage system

Enhancing and sustaining maize production in the upland has been the main focus of the farmers in almost all the areas in Southeast Asia where maize is the staple food. More than 70% of the upland areas in the Philippines is devoted to maize production. This is for food to human or feed to livestock but about 80% of the upland population rely on maize as their subsistence food. We continued working for practical ways to enhance profitability and sustain maize production in the uplands. We examined the ridge-tillage system as practiced in the United States: maintaining an alternate strips of untilled and tilled land in row-cropped field. The untilled strip (the ridge) is where the crop is planted in exactly the same row position in each successive season: the inter-row strip is tilled controlling the weeds and hilling up to rebuild ridges. As adapted to animal-powered system the sequence of operation is to make furrow through the stubble of the previous crop and plant in the same row; cultivate the crop with the moldboard plow usually burying the weeds between the rows at about 14 days after emergence and hilling up at about 30 days after emergence to create the ridges using the double moldboard plow; after the harvest replant the next crop through the stubble in the same rows as the previous one without any plowing or harrowing operations. If there are weed growth on the ridges band-spray a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide (glyphosyte) at the rate of 0.5 active ingredient (a.i.) per hectare on the ridges to eliminate early weed competition. Inter-row cultivation to control the weeds in the inter-row area and rebuild the ridges.